Memos from Bear Cave

I am the only son of a bitch in this company allowed to swim in the soup vats. Nobody else. I can swim in the soup vats whenever I damn well please because this is my soup company. If you don't like that, go ahead and start your own soup company.

Brick Linehouse and his R&D team are working on the future of our company. If even one of you rat-faced imbeciles so much as pesters Brick or his team, there will be mass firings. HOWEVER, if you see Brick or his team not working on saving this company, you have my permission to spit and hiss at them.

It is my exclusive right as owner of this company to howl like a wild beast whenever I so choose or whenever the spirit moves me to do so. I will not tolerate any other employee, be he man, woman or beast acting in this fashion. It is my gift... It is my curse.

In case you failed to comprehend the meaning of my last memo, I AM DYING OF A HEART ATTACK. I do not have time for your small, trivial problems or your questions about my health. If I wanted to chat with you, I would invite you over for dinner. I do not like any of you enough to ever do that.

Today I discovered something disturbing waiting for me just outside the front door to our offices: a bowl of blood. I asked Manuel Rodriguez if he knew what this was about, and he informed me it was part of a gang ritual known as "THE CHOLO."

I just caught wind of a new trend spreading around the office that I do not approve of. "Hand Slapping" as it is called is not to be done on my property. If you want to slap your hand against another person's hand, do so somewhere far away and outside of work. I don't tolerate sex perverts and inappropriate touching in my office.

Some of you have had the audacity to question my decision to take some of the older boys on a "field trip" to the Bouncy House. It's amazing any of you would question me, since I was upfront about where I was taking them. Are that many of you really not familiar with local strip clubs? What other Bouncy House would I mean?

In case any of you get a mind to leave early, I should give you fair warning: I have employed a sharpshooter. His name is Ðâng Lành and he was one of the best solders the Viet Cong ever produced. I met him during my days in the war and was so impressed by his ability to capture and torment his enemies that I hired him on the spot.

I'm instructing Tall Charlie to stand outside my door and swing around a machete indiscriminately. He will be wearing a blindfold and earplugs to ensure total objectivity and no bias with his reckless swinging.

I want to hear the sounds of soup being made, not whimpering from cooing mothers and dopey pencil-necked do-gooders. I pride myself on running the toughest soup business in the country, and the record number of workplace suicides here reinforces my position as THE CRUELEST MAN IN SOUP.

Apparently I'm paying you all to gossip about the state of the company. Well, if you cannot possibly continue living without knowing the truth, here it is: I lost half our offices in a high-stakes game of poker at one of the Soup & Broth afterparties.

We don't need marketing. Our soups appeal to a large audience. We've captured almost all of the wife beater market and angry dads prefer our soups two to one. You can't buy that kind of success. You earn it by making the meanest soup the world has ever seen.

I HAVE BEEN A MODEL BOSS. I removed all the raccoons and possums from the soup vats. There's no more yowling to distract you from work. I have reintroduced rats into our intricate ecosystem to keep insects from contaminating our soups. Finally, I have managed to purge the last of the rockabillies from our ventilation ducts and soupyards.

There's no easy way to put this, so I'll tell it like it is. Bouillon is died. He went missing before the weekend and yesterday I found his skeletonized remains at the bottom of the #3 soup vat during one of my swims. I thought the cream of mushroom soup had an especially nourishing taste, and a lot more clumps of fur and skin than usual.

Please disregard the previous memo mentioning a business trip to Tehran. It was a typo. It should have read "I'm back from my vacation trip to Tahoe." It's beautiful this time of year, but I'm goddamn sick of eating kebabs.

I just became aware of this Alice Cooper creep. Apparently this clown is putting on some kind of rock show over at the arena. I don't care for him, his music, his appearance, his attitude or any part of his act. It's disgusting. As of today, he's banned from the premises.

From now on, you're going to do exactly what I say, and only what I say. I am the only one here who knows what we're up against. We're on the razor's edge here, inches away from the King Frog Scenario. In case you idiots failed Soup History 101, that's what brought down so many of the greats.

That newspaper article is paying off big time. I just got off the horn with a man I've never met: my father. He recognized my photo in the paper and wants to come here and meet me. I want every last one of you working twice as hard cleaning this place up. My dad is coming tomorrow, and I want Bear Cave Soup to look like a million bucks.

I've got terrible news for you idiots. You're all going to lose your jobs. Your children are going to starve and die slowly in front of your eyes. Your whole world is going to end. If half of you make it through the day without committing suicide, I'd be shocked.